Despite overcast skies, hundreds gathered at Cesar Chavez Park on April 8 to join in the local incarnation of Birkat HaChammah, the Blessing of the Sun ceremony that comes every 28 years in Jewish tradition. See story, Page Three.

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board last week postponed discussion on whether the Gaia Building was adhering to its use permit in order to give its owners, Equity Residential, a month to negotiate leasing terms with the Marsh Theater. The zoning board will resume the discussion May 14.
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A Berkeley-based environmental group is suing the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, alleging that the agency violated the California Public Records Act by denying access to Pacific Steel Casting’s Odor Control Plan.
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UC Berkeley announced Tuesday, April 7 that the school had received a record number of applications for the 2009-2010 academic year and has accepted nearly 13,000 students to its fall freshman class.
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Berkeley didn’t make the list of schools selected last week for outdoor air quality monitoring by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a local environmental group isn’t happy about the omission.
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The City of Berkeley is expecting a small amount of budget relief this month—$289,000 in refunds for overcharges on office supplies by Office Depot. In a memo this week from City Manager Phil Kamlarz to Mayor Tom Bates and the Berkeley City Council, Bates said Office Depot had agreed to refund the money by April 17.
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The Berkeley Planning Commission sees the Central Berkeley of the future as a thicket of tall buildings covering the maximum possible area, but many of the members of the public who spoke at Monday’s hearing on the commission’s proposed Downtown Area plan found the vision alarming.
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Community leaders, labor rights activists and garment workers from Central America urged Berkeley city officials to pass a sweatshop-free ordinance at a Tuesday press conference at Old City Hall.
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The sun did not quite cooperate, hiding behind a screen of low clouds and spatters of rain. But a crowd that was alternately enthusiastic, happy and contemplative still greeted the dawn at Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park Wednesday, April 8, with sing-ing, prayer and introspection in the local incarnation of Birkat HaChammah, the Blessing of the Sun ceremony that comes every 28 years in Jewish tradition.
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Berkeley is standing in a long line of city and state governments for federal stimulus money, but City Manager Phil Kamlarz calls the situation “a mess on the federal side,” and it will probably take some time to sort out exactly how much money the city can apply for or actually receive.
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With creditors clamoring in the wings and unhappy with plans to sell off Golden Gate Fields and other key assets of troubled Magna Entertainment, the company agreed Friday, April 3, to delay a key court hearing until April 20.
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An attorney for BART said in an April 3 legal filing that the shooting death of Oscar Grant at the hands of BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland on New Year’s Day was “a tragic error” and Grant’s own actions contributed to the tragedy.
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The City of Berkeley currently has four department head vacancies, all of which are to be filled by the city manager “effective upon affirmative vote of five members of the [City] Council,” according to the Berkeley City Charter.
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Public Comment

While Berkeley has a proud tradition of progressive politics and social justice initiatives, our public high school continues to practice tracking, inequity, and an educational experience which is so much less than it could be. The recent spate of attacks hurled at a redesign proposal and at the small schools shows that some elements of our community will go to great lengths to prevent even modest reforms. While I could make point-by-point refutations of the shoddy and non-existent statistics that underlie the claims made by these people, I think it would be better to reiterate some of the fundamental principles that have guided small schools development at the high school.
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In response to Joe Eaton’s March 19 column, “Restoration at the Berkeley Meadow”: There is no restoration at the meadow. There is instead a development. The original area was under the sea, which was, as you say, filled with refuse.
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After puzzling over the “newsrack correction notices” littering downtown, I finally extracted copies of last week’s East Bay Express and Daily Planet, where I learned the full story of the city’s War on Newsracks.
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As a human rights lawyer and former professor, I think it is necessary to add three facts to the story about the Spanish judge considering indicting six Bush administration officials for violating international law.
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The March 19 edition of the Daily Planet contained three letters to the editor criticizing the proposal for an express lane on Telegraph Avenue. Two of these letters were from Oakland, and the third was from India. No one from Berkeley wrote in to criticize the express lane! So I think the proposal has passed its first real test of public acceptance within Berkeley. I encourage anyone in Berkeley, and especially anyone who lives or works in the neighborhoods surrounding Telegraph, to write in with any criticism they might have about the proposal.
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On March 20 on the eve of the traditional Iranian New Year, President Obama offered the Iranians a “new beginning,” but acknowledged three decades of strained relations between the United States and Iran. Iran’s supreme leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei rebuffed this overture. Here’s a bit of background.
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As an Oaklander watching the memorial services for the four slain Oakland police officers, I was astonished and disturbed when Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums did not speak at the service. I could not imagine a situation where the entire nation is watching and law enforcement officers are attending in force yet the Mayor of the City in mourning does not speak. I later came to understand that several of the officers’ families requested that the Mayor not participate in the ceremony and that the Mayor honored their wishes. It was disappointing to learn that such a request was made.
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When the full story is finally told, and though not likely freely admitted by many, deep within the spiritual thinking of numerous African Americans, an emotional candle will be lit in the memory of Lovelle Mixon, the man who, in a horrific shootout in which he was finally killed, shot five Oakland police officers, four of whom have died. They will then say to themselves, “But for the grace of God I could have been he.”
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The light brown apple moth (LBAM) aerial pesticide spray that threatened the Bay Area last year shocked many local residents into awareness of the risks of exposure to mass pesticide applications and has inspired Assemblymember Sandré R. Swanson (D-Oakland) to introduce the Clean Air for Children, Seniors, and Working Families Act (AB 622).
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These days when I’m not sad or angry because something else vital is lost or threatened, I tend to feel grateful. After all we live in a paid off house, I retired last June, and while life is hardly bon-bons on the couch, any or all of five days a week I can exercise and laugh at Senior Aqua Aerobics at the West Campus City pool with the rest of us aging polar bears and our wonderful Fearless Leader, Yassir.
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I was both amused and appalled by Mr. Sukoff’s statement in his April 2 commentary that “There is no reason Berkeley could not comfortably house 150,000 or even 200,0000 people and be a more interesting and dynamic place as a result.”
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Editorial

The splendid novelist Walter Mosley was in town last week to read from his new book. He’s a smart and entertaining talker as well as a fine writer, and he had a big audience in the palm of his hand at Oakland’s First Congregational Church for more than an hour, just answering questions about his work. He’s a man in his late fifties who rejoices in having been raised in Los Angeles by a Jewish mother and an African-American father, in a time when there weren’t many guys on the street with that ethnic combination. Not surprising in Oakland, several of his questions were about that dual perspective.
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Columns

Afghanistan is a gatherer of metaphors: “crossroads of Asia,” “graveyard of empires,” and the “Great Game,” to name a few, although it might be more accurate to think of it as a Rubik’s Cube, that frustrating puzzle of intersecting blocks that only works when everything fits perfectly. The trick for the Obama administration is to figure out how to solve the puzzle in a time frame rapidly squeezed by events both internal and external to that war-torn central Asian nation.
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We’ve talked before about the phenomenon of what we call “yard-dog journalism,” that practice of all the dogs (or journalists, or columnists, or newspapers) on the block taking up the howling after someone walks by on the street, even though that person has done nothing peculiar, and may have passed that exact same way with no response many times before. But this time, after one of the dogs starts howling, all the others join in the clamor. Ask the last one exactly what triggered his barking this time and, if he could talk, he’d tell you “Damned if I know. All the other dogs was barking, that’s why, so I figured there must be a reason.”
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If I were one of Those Kids These Days and had a working laptop with WiFi, or an iPhone and faster fingers, I could’ve filed this closer to last week’s deadline. It would’ve been live from Alta Bates’ lovely and relaxing Emergency Department. As it is, I’m seizing the moment to declare myself a late casualty of Dutch elm disease.
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Arts & Events

Mark Jackson, who directed Strindberg’s Miss Julie, opening tonight at the Aurora, and David Graves, who composed the music for the production, first met in 2003, when both were in residence for five weeks at the Djerassi Foundation retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Home & Garden

I met a very nice fellow the other day. A composer. Funny how homeowners end up being something other than just…homeowners. Neat guy, writes music for films, TV, corporate films and the like. He also had the composure of a musician, smooth and philosophical. Good thing for all those involved in selling him this house, because let me tell you, it would be very easy to be acrimonious considering the experience he’s had.
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